Amazon’s The Rig Season 1 Ending Explained-Quorum Sensing, Extinction Cycles, The Ancestor, And What It Means For Season 2

Amazon’s latest sci-fi series, The Rig, includes a little John Cameron’s The Abyss, a sprinkling of John Carpenter’s The Thing, and a dusting of William Eubank’s Underwater. There’s even a tickle of Arrival’s messaging in the later episodes, which is a good thing for fans of emotional sci-fi. It isn’t all great, but enough is to make it a compelling watch. Although the pacing is sometimes maddeningly slow across the six episodes, which could have each been cut down by ten minutes, the ending of The Rig is a nail-biter that sets up a potential Season 2 while wrapping things up nicely for now.

A young crewman Baz(Calvin Demba), fell from a tower trying to restore communications on an oil rig that is in trouble. Despite being badly injured, he is up and walking the next day. Throughout the next two episodes, it becomes clear that exposure to the ash and fog that has inexplicably overtaken the rig has the power to mutate and change humans. It can make them better or worse depending on what kind of shape they were in, to begin with.

For Baz, who was young and in great shape, it healed him but came at a price. He is changed. While the group searches for him, he seems to be taking orders from something bigger—a higher power, something more meaningful and a massive amount wiser than us. Cut off from rescue, their families, and their homes, they must depend on each other. When a group of survivors mysteriously show up on a lifeboat, everything comes into focus. Is it too late, though?

The ending of The Rig

At the beginning of The Rig Episode 6, we learn that Coake, Game of Thrones Mark Addy, had been sent to destroy the organism Rose named the Ancestor. That is what he had been doing on the Charlie before it exploded. He had been tasked with a secret mission to inject a toxic poison deep below the ocean into the Ancestor in the hopes of killing it. Pictor knew all about the spores as the Ancestor had already converted tons of oil back into living plant matter. Since Pictor was in the oil business, this was a major problem. Coupled with the seismic events that had begun happening, Pictor decided it was an us or them situation.

This poison is what Coake had Hutton and the others spray on Baz, Hulmer(Martin Compston), and Garrow in Episode 5. The poison kills the Ancestor and everything infected by it. He is a selfish company man who doesn’t care who else dies as long as he destroys the organism. Coake tells everyone that two intelligent species can never coexist.

Meanwhile, Rose(Schitt’s Creek’s Emily Hampshire), Magnus(Game Of Throne’s Iain Glen), and Fulmer came to a different conclusion. They believed Baz was right all along, and the organism was trying to determine if they would be an ally or a foe. They thought if they could talk to the organism using quorum sensing(which is a real thing), they could make it understand that they wanted to help. If they could convince the Ancestor that humans weren’t all bad, they might spare us, and we could work together to heal the Earth and the Ancestor itself.

Unfortunately, the Ancestor had already made up its mind that another extinction-level event was necessary, and the Holocene circle closed. The rings that Baz and later Fulmer drew were what the Ancestor used to determine time. Like the aliens in The Arrival, time is not linear for the organism, and each circle that closes marks the end of a lifeform’s cycle. So when the circle closed, it meant that our time was up. There have been five previous life cycles on Earth, each ending in extinction. They are the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic, and Cretaceous. We are in the Holocene life cycle, and it seems the Ancestor has decided we should also be removed.

The group fears they were unsuccessful in convincing the Ancestor we wanted to collaborate, not compete, and retreats to the helicopter. Baz stays behind, trying one last time to show the organism humans could be good. He willingly sacrifices himself to prove we are capable of valuing something other than our own life.

Everyone but Baz gets on the two choppers as a massive wave bears down on the rig. The wave hits the rig just as they take off, and everyone looks shell-shocked. Coake informs them they aren’t going home, and Cat panics because her wife is in a beach town not far from shore. She knows the wave that destroyed the rig will soon hit the mainland. We last see the crew looking confused and horrified as they fly into the unknown. The series ends with Cat’s wife watching from her home as a massive wave prepares to hit the shore.

Where were the helicopters headed?

The ominous ending of The Rig leaves all the surviving crew of the Kinloch Charlie on a helicopter headed away from their home. Thousands of people presumably will die in the massive wave headed for shore. Coake says he warned them they could never go home unless they destroyed the organism Rose named the Ancestor. Magnus, Fulmer, Rose, and Baz tried to communicate with it while everyone was evacuating, but it seemed they were too late. Coake and Pictor had a plan all along, and likely they have a bunker somewhere where they can go to regroup and come up with a new plan.

More than likely, they are headed somewhere near a military site and landlocked. Assuming they also need to avoid major fault lines and the coasts, they will need someplace stable and protected. Groom Lake in the United States or Kelvedon Hatch Nuclear Bunker in the United Kingdom are both possibilities. However, unless Baz can convince the Ancestor to retreat, nowhere is safe. We know from Jurassic Park life always finds a way. The spores are airborne, and nothing is immune. I only know Coake is a nightmare, and those infected by the spore should be very worried.

The organism the Ancestor is based on

Several ancient organisms have already been discovered, and more are found constantly. There are trees and bushes thousands of years old, and a flower variety called the Silene stenophylla found in Russia was revived after 32,000 years. The Pando is a clonal tree colony that shares one massive root system. It is 80,000 years old. The tree portion has an average life cycle of 130 years, but because we cannot determine root age, some scientists believe the root system could be as old as one million years. The Pando is currently dying sadly, and they are looking into ways of saving the majestic organism. Bacteria found in amber and yeast dating at least 45,000 million years old also exist.

The most shocking is the Endoliths. This is what the Ancestor in The Rig is based on. They are over 100 million years old, found a mile and a half below the ocean’s floor, and are comprised of viruses, fungi, and bacteria. They are combining the Endoliths with the Permian bacteria found in New Mexico, which is 250 million years old. The message is clear. We are insignificant.

All the questions that need answers in The Rig Season 2

The Ancestor doesn’t consider all of humanity enemies. It spared Cat because she was pregnant and it is currently living inside Fulmer, Baz, and Magnus. Will our group be able to convince the Ancestor to stop destroying humanity before we are all gone? Also, considering Coake and Pictor are very company-focused, what will happen when the group gets to the secret location? Several of the crew have been infected by the spores and I would not be shocked to find them experimented on or killed outright. Is Baz alive or dead?

Why does the Ancestor keep showing Magnus his dead son? Is it trying to tell him that nothing is ever gone? It just changes forms. Is it proof that it understands some people should be saved, or is Magnus hallucinating because of the stress? Lastly, what will remain when the wave recedes? Is that wave the only one, or did the Ancestor create environmental events all over the globe? Will our surviving group continue to evolve and change after their exposure to the Ancestor?

I’m reminded of the zombie-inducing spore people found in Gaia and HBO’s much anticipated The Last Of Us. Annihilation also comes to mind. The story of an ecosystem being forever changed still haunts me. For now, it seems like Fulmer and the others retain their memories and intelligence. As mutation continues, will that always be the case, or will what remains be something entirely new? Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it were new. There are so many questions left unanswered and even more, set up by the thrilling final episode. With no news about a potential The Rig Season 2, we will have to watch and hope it doesn’t go the way of Night Sky and be one and done.